Cracking A Shell of Diamond
by ally.enchantress
Summary: Years of keeping it to herself has made the shell around Olivia Benson's heart impenetrable. Unbreakable. She has had forty years to build it up, harden it, numb it to attack. She made it injury-proof...but is it Elliot-proof? 1 swear, 1 time. T for that


**So I'm completely and utterly pissed. I'm using my brother's computer to upload this story because my laptop insists upon hating me. As a glimpse into just how ticked off I am, let me tell you that I wanted to post this almost three weeks ago. Whenever I clicked on the Choose/Change Category button, I was shown a pop-up that said "Internet Explorer has stopped working" and it closed me out of . It was the cause of many a scream of righteous indignation, and I almost pulled an Elliot and beat the crap out of my school locker. Oh, school *sighs* we're not even going to enter that subject.**

**By the way, did you notice that *sighs* thing? I'm spending too much time on Twitter, guys! Yes, I have a Twitter. Look me up! allyenchantress**

**Credit for this story goes to Arabesque01 and Carrina .R (formerly Sara Hudson), who kindly let me into their Twitter conversation about wanting to see Elliot crack the shell around Olivia's heart. They said it wasn't copyrighted, and Sara said she was writing something for this too, so you guys will get that, too.**

**Disclaimer: This shameless fluff belongs to me, as do the characters of SVU! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!! ouch, Dick, why'd you do that???....oh......but I thought you said.....OMG, Elliot!.......Yes, sir, I completely understand sir. Do I get a reward, sir?...........ouch............yes, sir. I will leave you alone, detective, I swear. #stablercould make me stop bothering DW about the rights to SVU. Basically, it's all still DW's. Until next time! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!ouch!!!!!!!!! Sorry, Elliot, I'll shut up now.**

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If one were to dissect Olivia Benson, Elliot thought staring at his partner as she wrote out a DD5, after shooting Elliot in the head, they would find a thick barrier surrounding her heart that no knife could penetrate. His partner had a shell encasing her heart. A diamond casing. Impenetrable. A shell that was beautiful, just like everything else about her, strong, tough, and old, under construction since birth.

Olivia knew Elliot was looking at her. She knew because of the prickling on her skin when she felt his eyes. She felt him pounding on the walls around her heart, begging for entrance. She wanted to let him in. She wanted to so badly because she knew what that was like. She knew what it felt like to have Elliot in her heart. She knew because, before Gitano, he had lived inside her heart. Her shell had cracked so quickly for him, she had let him see her heart, let him know everything about her, even the parts she would rather forget. But Gitano had changed all of that. He had shown her, reminded her that her shell was better left intact. Baring her heart just led to heartbreak. After over forty years of building that shell, keeping her heart protected from injuries, keeping it all to herself, she had only let one person inside to see it – Elliot. But he was gone now, just like every other man in her life, he was gone. Out of her. On the outside, being denied entrance again.

That might have been why she had not told him about Sealview. The last time she'd opened her heart to him, he'd broken it. She was not about to let that happen again, not about to go through that pain again. However masochistic she was, her sense of self-preservation was not completely gone. Yet. As much as she wanted him in her heart, she knew she couldn't survive another break.

Elliot had not had a good day. Eli had roused him at the most ungodly hour and refused to go back to sleep, so Elliot had tried and failed to keep him from waking Kathy. Kathy, always grumpy in the mornings, had asked him why he'd gotten home at another ungodly hour, one in the morning, and Elliot had explained, very politely, that he and Olivia had been working on a case and gotten distracted. Kathy had sighed and muttered something about Olivia herself being distracting and did Elliot get distracted by her or his work. Elliot had left without breakfast and spent the entire drive to work raging loudly at both women in his life. He was mad at Olivia for being in the middle of his loveless marriage and angry at Kathy for putting her there. All his yelling at the steering wheel had put him in a bad mood so that, when Olivia, looking sleep deprived and beautiful as usual, handed him a donut and coffee, it had taken a lot of willpower not to snap at her.

The victim to the case he and Olivia had worked so hard on last night – taking a break only to order a midnight snack of Chinese – had recanted this morning, saying that the man twenty years older than her was her boyfriend, not her rapist. It was all lies, but without a complaining witness, they could not do anything.

"Elliot?"

Her sweet voice cut through his musing, and he refocused his gaze on her beautiful face. Brown eyes stared at him with a mixture of pity and concern that set his temper on edge. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Fine."

Unconvinced, she pressed on, "It's just that you've been staring at me for the past hour, and yet you're thinking at a hundred miles an hour about something entirely unrelated to our case. I just thought…"

"I know what you thought, Olivia," he snapped. "I'm fine, okay? Drop it."

Her eyebrows lifted as she stared at him in surprise. "Okay," she said, lifting her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Sorry. So, uh…" desperate to avoid a fight when they were both tired and irritable, she searched for something safe to ask. "How's Eli?"

Apparently her partner's youngest son was not a safe topic, because Elliot blew up in her face.

"Why are you always trying to get into my personal life, Olivia?" he said, perilously close to yelling. "My wife, my mother, and my kids are none of your damn business!"

"Sorry," Olivia said, her fuse shortening quickly as the lioness in her stirred. "There's no need to snap at me," she told him, a last ditch attempt at peace. "I was just trying to help."

Elliot snorted. "Yeah," he laughed, "yeah, that's what you do, isn't it? You like to help. You like to help people. Well, that's just great, Liv, but do you think you could stay out of my business while you're doing it? My mother, my marriage, and my daughter are my responsibility, okay? Not yours!"

She was on her feet, too, and she was mad now. The lioness was snarling, testing the waters before the strike. "Elliot, if I hadn't helped, your mother would still be estranged, Kathleen would be in jail, and Kathy would have taken the rest of your kids away from you!"

"And that would have been my responsibility!" he bellowed. "I would have dealt with the consequences. See, your problem is that you don't have any family, so you insist upon getting mixed up in everybody else's! You have no personal life, so you just have to get all up in ours! You stuck your nose into my family too many times to count, you've gotten into Fin's private business with his son—"

"Don't you go bringing me into this," Fin warned, half-rising to meet the restraining hand of his partner.

She yelled right back, "I didn't ask to get involved in Fin's business, Ken called me. He brought me into it. I was wrong, and I apologized! And don't go blaming all my problems on my lack of family, because you've got enough family for three people and you have more problems than I do!"

She felt him pounding at her shell again, demanding something to break, but she hardened her barriers and fought back. When Olivia fought back, she fought hard. Elliot winced slightly as she wielded her knife with great skill.

Realizing she'd scored a point, Olivia put her hand to the hilt and shoved. "Your problem, Stabler," she informed him, "is that you have too much family business. I can hardly walk without stepping in your dirty laundry! Five kids, at least two of them mistakes, one divorce, nearly two, a mother you don't speak to, God, El!" She saw the pain in his eyes and wanted to stop, but the fire in her heart, burning at his hands, just wouldn't go out. "At least with no family, I don't have drama enough to fuel a soap opera!"

"Except Simon," Elliot said, causing her to stop. Eyes narrowed as Elliot pulled the bloody knife from his body and let it slam against the diamond shell encasing his best friend's heart. "What about Simon, huh? What about the rapist you aided and abetted?"

"He's not a rapist!" she shouted. God, she wanted to hit something. Preferably something six feet tall and made of iron-hard muscle.

"You didn't know that!" Like a shark, Elliot sensed blood and dove in for the kill. "God, Liv, you're trying to gain some satisfaction out of my mistakes because your whole life is one!"

Elliot had won. That was all he could think in the split second before Olivia reacted to his words. Her mouth dropped open, her muscles trembled, and her eyes widened as they sparkled with moisture. One look into those eyes told Elliot with absolute certainty that he had gone too far.

She had to get out of there now. She could feel her tears waiting for release, and she had to get out of there now. "Fuck you," she hissed, more venom in her mouth than a krait snake, and turned and fled, directly away from him, directly toward the crib. She could have left the building, it would have been the more reasonable choice, but to escape she would have to pass him, and she could not bear to touch him.

She pounded up the stairs. Elliot heard her go. Then, he heard the door to the crib slam shut. The crash resonated through the squad room for a full ten seconds and even longer in his mind. He felt remorse curling on the edges of his anger, but he pushed it away. She deserved it, he thought savagely. She deserved to feel this pain, this retribution for what she had said about his kids. She deserved it. So he sat down at his desk with a huff and, out of the kindness of his heart, finished the DD5 Olivia had been writing.

* * *

Up in the crib, Olivia staggered forward two steps and felt all the strength drain out of her legs. She collapsed to her knees and began to cry quietly. Her shoulders hitched and shook and her tears rolled down her cheeks, splashing to the metallic floor and leaving little dark spots. She closed her mouth, pressing her lips tightly together so that no sound could reach the ears of the men below.

What had hurt the most hadn't been Elliot's cruel words. He yelled at her all the time. What hurt was the undeniable truth that came with those words. He was right. She was a screw-up. A mistake. A baby that should never have even entered the world. She had been a mistake her entire life was full of them. It had been a mistake to not tell someone about her mother to escape the drunkenness and promiscuous influence that she'd been surrounded with all through her young life. It had been a mistake to accept the proposal of one of her mother's students when she was sixteen. It had been a mistake to do so many things on the job, she couldn't even name them all. It had been a mistake to not call Fin when his son contacted her for help. It had been a mistake to send money to Simon. It had been a mistake to go to Oregon. It had been a mistake to approach Merritt Rook in Grand Central and an even bigger one to believe he had a bomb. It had been a mistake to accept Dick Finley's offer of dinner. It had been a mistake to go to Elliot's undercover home during the Bushido/Tybor case. It had been a mistake to leave Mia alone with her abusive husband. It had been a mistake to let Elliot go alone to see Ryan O'Halloran in the lab when she knew there was a killer on the loose. It had been a mistake to let Elliot into her heart in the first place because she knew he would just break it in the end.

Oh, God, she'd screwed up. She'd screwed up so badly, and now there was only one safe haven in her body, one place that had not been touched, violated, and that place was her heart. And, to keep that safe, she had been forced to surround it in a shell of steel.

Maybe that was what she should do. Walk around in a big ball of reinforced steel. Nobody would be able to get in or out. She would not have to face the world in all its cruelty, and it would not have to face her and all her stupid mistakes and screw-ups.

In a ball of steel, she mused, she would never get hurt. Sealview certainly would never have happened. That whole thing had been one big screw-up. She'd screwed up. She was not blaming herself anymore, per se, for the assault. She knew that hadn't been her fault. But she had done the wrong things in the prison. She had caused trouble, drawn attention, helped start a riot, made it harder for Fin to keep track of her. The violation itself was not her fault, but Fin's inability to prevent it from occurring was. It was her own damn fault that she had an ego that just would not shut up and let her accept Matthew Parker's words and touches as a professional hazard.

Just like Elliot said, her entire life was one big mistake.

Well, she thought, if she was going to feel sorry for herself, now was the time to do it.

But it hurt to feel sorry for herself. So she let herself swirl into oblivion because, actually, that felt better.

* * *

Elliot tried to ignore Fin and Munch's loud conversation, their pointed glances and coughs in his direction, but when Munch strode right up to his desk, bent down, and coughed obnoxiously in his ear, he could not take it anymore.

"What?" he bellowed.

Munch actually stepped back at the wrath directed his way. He did not back down, though, which was not very beneficial for Elliot's plan to stay sulky in silence. One way or another, Munch would get his words in.

The steely glare in the man's eye was something Elliot was unaccustomed to. So much so that he did not say anything to avoid what his colleague desired to say.

"It's been two hours," John informed him like Elliot had not been watching his clock with OCD for the past hour, fifty-nine minutes, and thirty-four seconds. "I'm worried about her." That obviously had not been what he was trying to say, because that alone would not make Munch this angry.

"Okay," replied Elliot, glancing down at his paperwork and trying to ignore the burning anxiety festering in his gut.

A thin, bony hand smacked its way onto the top of the paperwork pile. When Elliot looked up again, Munch withdrew it, his eyes like flint. "We all heard what you said," he began, "and Fin and I just want you to know that, if your bulldog tendencies hurt just hurt her beyond repair, there will be no safe haven for you on this face of this earth. Is that clear?"

"Is that a threat?" Elliot countered, glaring furiously.

Fin got up and stood on Elliot's other side. "No, Stabler," he said softly, darkly, "that's a promise." He bent down so that Elliot had to look him in the eye. "And if you ever call my baby sister a mistake again, I'll remind you why Darius nearly went to jail for life. _That_ was a threat." The pair of them would have been funny playing gangster had the reason for their angry words been anything other than Olivia.

Elliot knew they were worried. So was he. Without his better half to keep him company, he had nothing to distract him, nothing to keep his mood above water. Elliot knew perfectly well that he should not have said those things to Olivia, but she also should never have said those things about his kids. He deserved to be feeling guilt and remorse and pain and anger right now, but so did she. Still, two hours was a long time to stay in the cribs with the door locked, especially with so many curious people, so many cases they could work on.

Decision made, he stood up and made his way to the closed door of the crib.

* * *

Olivia had never really liked math. It was only on those rare occasions that she understood it without the use of a calculator, when the reasoning behind the solution clicked in her mind and she realized both why and how she had arrived at the correct answer, that it became her favorite subject.

Maybe that was why she hated herself. That was how she felt. She absolutely and unquestionably hated herself. Because she did not understand anything about her. She did not understand what was going on inside her. Sealview had only made that worse, because, though she understood what was happening to her, she did not know why she could not control it.

Her life was about control. She lived it, breathed it, and devoured it with breakfast. If she didn't have control, she had nothing. She controlled her job, her meals, her words, her thoughts, and she controlled her contact with Elliot. Too bad her life was out of control.

She wasn't sure how long she had been up in the crib, bawling her eyes out like the pathetic mistake she was. She knew she should stop crying and go back to work. She was being a baby. A weak, pathetic, miserable screw-up., that was what she was. Olivia understood completely why her mother had hated her. Sometimes, Olivia could barely stomach the sight of herself in the mirror.

Elliot must hate her, too. She deserved to feel like someone had taken a jackhammer to the shell around her heart. She deserved to be hurting, because mistakes were not around to feel pleasure.

* * *

Hesitantly, Elliot raised his fist to knock on the door.

He did not even make contact. He did not make contact because, from inside the crib, he heard the worst sound he had ever had to hear.

It was so soft he almost missed it, like a pin dropping in a room full of whispers could only be discerned if you were listening for it. What Elliot heard was a quiet sob, so soft and sweet that he was not sure he had heard it until he heard it again. So beautiful, so innocent, so sad. He knew without a shadow of doubt that he had made his partner cry, and he knew without even a hint of a shadow of doubt that, whatever she had said about him and his children, Olivia Benson did not deserve to cry.

Carefully, so as not to scare her, he opened the door – apparently she had not locked it – and nearly reeled back and shot himself at the sight before him.

His partner, his beautiful, strong, innocent partner, was on her knees, hunched over hands braced against the floor, shoulders shaking with the strength of the tears she was shedding. He had actually made his partner cry. He was, undeniably, the worst excuse for a human being ever. Unthinking, he crossed to her and knelt beside her, pulling her into his arms and letting her cry into his shoulder. She resisted for a moment, only a moment, before melting into his embrace. This scared him even more because he had expected her to pull out her gun and shoot him for daring to breach the taboo and touch her. To have her be so accepting, so docile, so obedient to his desires showed him just how far gone she was.

"Shh, Liv," she heard him say. "I'm sorry. God, Liv, I'm so sorry." She wanted to tell him not to apologize, that it was not his fault, that he was right, but she was concentrating on her shell that seemed to always be mere putty in his hands, keeping it from breaking open. Why was he able to do this to her? Why did he have such complete dominance over her willpower?

"El, I'm sorry," she managed to say. The least she could do was apologize so she could feel like she deserved even a fraction of his tender embrace.

She felt his face in her hair and froze. His lips were against her head, kissing her. Damn it. Damn him. The shell around her heart buckled. It held, barely.

"Liv?" he said, pulling her up so he could see her face. She was pretty sure her bones had disintegrated, because her muscles would not move. She was limp in his arms. "Can I ask you something?"

She met his eyes with caution. "Yes…"

He bit his lip and waited for a second before saying, "Do you know how much this hurts?"

A jolt ran through her as her walls buckled again in protest of the raw emotion, pain in his eyes, the openness with which he asked her. It nearly cracked her in two, but, with tremors of exertion, her shell stayed intact. "I…" she could not seem to form the words fast enough. "I'm sorry, El, so sorry. I know I shouldn't have brought your gamily into this. I should have stayed out of your personal life. I'm so sorry, I—"

He put a finger to her lips, effectively silencing her as she tried to remember why she was apologizing.

"Not about that," he told her, removing his finger in favor of cupping the back of her head, providing her no reprieve during which to gather her thoughts. "Do you know how much it hurts to have you shut me out of your heart?" He watched her shame turn to defense.

"Believe me, El," she told him with certainty, "you don't want to be in my heart. It hurts too much."

Elliot fixed her with a frown, sure as ever. "Liv, it hurts more to be on the outside wondering than it ever could on the inside."

There was pressure on her shell again. She felt it begin to give. There was no way she could withstand another buckle. It would break.

"Is that why you won't tell me what happened at Sealview?" he asked suddenly. "You think it's going to hurt me?"

She frowned unhappily. "Hit me when I'm down, is that it?" Turning her face away from him, she wiped her eyes and started to get up. "It will hurt you," she informed him, just before his fingers encircled her wrist in a grip of steel, pulling her back down.

"When are you going to get it?" he growled, holding her shoulders as she twisted and turned, trying to find escape. "It hurts me when you don't talk to me. You're hurting me right now!"

That stopped her in her tracks. Her struggles ceased, and she sat there, struggling to come to terms with this new development. Everything she had kept from him, everything he did not know had been kept from him purely out of the desire for his peace of mind. She did not want him hurt. To hear that she was hurting him anyway, despite her best efforts…

"Liv," he whispered, holding her close, "you make it so hard to take care of you."

She pulled away. "I don't need you to take care of me."

"I know," he told her, "but I need me to take care of you. Does that make sense?"

She thought. "Do you mean that, even if I don't need your protection, you need to protect me to feel safe?"

"Basically."

She smiled, feeling the answers she had been seeking for years enter her heart with a sense of right as they slid into place. He had set a protective detail on her because, for his peace of him, he needed to know she was safe. He had yelled at her, broken her heart during the Gitano case because it nearly tore him in two to see her injured like that. He wanted to know what happened in Sealview because he would forever hurt until he knew. He did not think she could not protect herself, he feared what would happen if he could not. His outbursts really had been nothing but pent up fear and frustration.

A strange sensation coursed through her, and she realized that her shell, built to protect her from harm, could not withstand someone who wanted the same thing, someone who would never hurt her simply because he was not capable of the action. It had not cracked or given or broken. It was still perfectly intact. It had simply allowed Elliot to seep into it.

"Yeah," she said in answer, thinking of him. "I think I know exactly what that's like."

Another realization took hold of her. If she had not let him in after that understanding, he never would have gotten in. His insistent pounding would have yielded nothing but frustration, because his insistent pounding hurt her. Nothing could break her shell. Breaking her shell hurt, and her shell was built to protect her from pain. The peaceful way Elliot had seeped through it had not hurt. In fact, it had felt wonderful.

Elliot felt it the second Olivia let him inside her shell. He felt it like it was a breath of fresh air after hours in a box, like a cool glass of water after years in a desert. He had not heard a crack, though. Her shell was perfectly intact still. Whatever had happened, he reveled in the sensation of being in her heart. He had thought her shell was beautiful, if annoying. What her shell hid, however, was absolutely glorious. It was her heart, the thing he had been trying to get to for years, and it was more beautiful than he had ever imagined.

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